


Fate's Design

by Rangergirl3



Series: Bad Things Happen Bingo [2]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-10
Updated: 2019-05-10
Packaged: 2020-02-27 00:28:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,252
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18727984
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rangergirl3/pseuds/Rangergirl3
Summary: Prompt: Public Torture/ExecutionRequested by LadyliendaFor the BTHB card, can you do Public Torture? Maybe Keith is saved from the brink of death at the last minute? I love the way you write Pidge and I could totally see her rescuing Keith. Super excited for your bingo card!





	Fate's Design

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LadyLienDa](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyLienDa/gifts).



> Pidge isn't going to let this happen. She can't. 
> 
> Keith is family.

 "Keith? I thought - I heard something. Are - are you okay?"

_No answer._

Pidge presses her ear against the cold stone wall of her cell. There aren't many cracks or flaws in the stones, and none of them are large enough to let her see what's going on in Keith's cell.

_Maybe he's just catching his breath._

Eternity seems to pass before she hears an answer. It's weaker than it should be.

"...ngh...n-not...great..."

The fingers of her left hand curl into a tight fist. It's a struggle to keep her voice even, calm, rational.

"What happened?"

Her impatience screams at her to kick or punch the wall, to get up and move, to do _something_ , but instead, she grinds her teeth and stays right where she is. She doesn't have any time to waste.  

 _Focus, Katie,_  she tells herself. _Help Keith. Get out. Get to Green. Get back to the Castle._

He still hasn't answered her.

"Keith? Can you still hear me? What happened?"

Something clinks against the opposite side of the wall, rendering his reply unintelligible.

_Chains, maybe? That was weird. **She** wasn't chained up. _

When his voice comes again, it's a little bit closer. He must be seated right across from her. If there wasn't a wall between them, they would be looking at each other.

"...'s nothing...'mportant..."

Pidge knows better. Before the guard locked the door of Keith's cell, there had been a struggle. Keith had clearly lost.

" _Keith_."

"...they just...just made me drink...something..."

Pidge only realizes she's automatically hunched her shoulders into a position of utter rage when she tries to press her ear against the cell wall again.

"Any idea what?"

"...no..."

He coughs a few times before he can go on.

"...your...c-comms...?"

His voice breaks off, but Katie guesses what he was about to ask.

"Mine are fried. Must have been those scanner-gun-things the aliens used to knock me out. Yours?"

Her sense of unease only grows when he doesn't answer her question. Something is seriously wrong here. Keith isn't talkative like Lance, but he's not usually this...fragmented. 

_He'd been injured during their capture, but he'd just been pissed off when they'd been taken to the cells. He hadn't been anything like this._

"Keith," Pidge says, cold fear creeping into her blood, "Do you think...the drink did something? To you?"

She doesn't want to say _because you're part-Galra,_ but even in his less-than-cognizant state, he's able to answer.

"...'m...not s-sure..."

Pidge's curls her fingers into fists, her knuckles turning white against the stones. 

"Keith, try to stay focused, okay? Tell me what happened after we got separated."

For a few moments, she's not sure if he heard her, but then his voice comes again.

"...well...um...before...they left...they might have..."

His words drift off, resume a few seconds later.

"...uh...they...might've said...som'ng about...war c-crimes."

Pidge's heart drops straight into her shoes, and she swears under her breath. Before she can say anything else, a door somewhere in the distance slams open, followed by voices she doesn't recognize. 

_Shit. Someone's coming towards Keith's cell. More than one, from the sound of it._

At that moment, something small and metallic glints out from a tiny space between two of the bricks in the wall. Pidge stares at it stupidly for a second before she realizes that it's Keith's shorted out comms link.

He must have managed to find a weak spot between the bricks on the other side of the wall, maybe where some of the mortar had crumbled away.

_There might be a way she can fix the comms unit - but not before -_

"Pidge," Keith says, and the words are rushed, "Pidge, just - make it out of here, okay? Find your family."

She opens her mouth to tell him that he _is_ family, and she would _never_ leave him behind, but the harsh, grating sound from the other side of the wall drowns out her words, and then it's nothing but _noise,_ none of it good.

* * *

It takes every last bit of concentration he has, but Keith manages to put his back against the wall just before the cell door opens.

His head hurts, and his coordination is off, but still, with any luck, the guards won't notice the tiny, crumbled pieces of mortar on the cell floor, and they won't think to check Pidge for a second comms unit they didn't think she had.

The first guard to enter the cell is holding what looks like some kind of collar. Two others join him, all of them grim and silent.

Dizzy and sick as he is, Keith still glares back at them and readies himself for a fight.

There isn't much of one.

One of the guards presses a button Keith can't see, and the chains holding his wrists against the wall go taunt without warning, forcing his arms out and to the side, causing him to catch his breath in startled discomfort. When he tries to rise to his feet, one of the guards kicks him in the stomach, and Keith crumples back onto his knees with a groan of pain.

Whatever potion or poison they'd forced him to swallow earlier has him off-balance, in every sense of the word. He'd never have made a sound if he had better control of himself, because Pidge can hear everything that's going on.

Proof of this is that immediately after he cries out, she kicks the wall. 

"Hey!" she shouts. Her voice is loud enough to be heard clearly through the barrier between them. "Hey, _leave him alone_!"

The guards don't listen to her - _predictably -_ and continue with what they were doing.

First, one of the guards activates a remote control, and then all Keith feels is _pain_. Awful, all-encompassing pain that jolts through his entire system and only stops an endless time later. 

As if from a great distance, he sees that the skin on his right wrist is red and...burned...where it touches the cuffs.

Electrified restraints.

_...makes sense..._

They buckle the collar around his neck while he's still too dazed to fight against it. After that, one of the aliens wearing a white uniform steps forward, and Keith sees that they are holding a syringe. When the needle comes towards his arm, Keith tries to pull backwards, or to at least pull his arm away from the unknown threat, to hunch over it, to do _something_ to get away from the sharp point, but then the cuffs are activated once more, and when the pain finally stops, all he's able to do is to whimper, turn his head away, squeeze his eyes tight shut, and hope that whatever this is isn't going to make him hurt any worse than he does already.

Pidge is still kicking at the wall and shouting at the top of her lungs.

One of the guards kicks at the wall almost absent-mindedly. 

"Shut up," they say. "It's not you we're executing."

Keith could have told them that was a bad idea, but then, anyone who tells Pidge to just accept the fact that her friend is about to die clearly knows nothing about the Green Paladin.

She lets forth a furious, ear-splitting snarl of pure rage, and Keith figures he should probably say something to her before this - this mystery toxin kicks in, so he concentrates and manages to get out a few words.

"-t's - "

His vision's already blurred and out of focus. Damn, this stuff works quick.

"-t's okay...'m...fi...ne...P..."

Then his mouth just...stops working. His tongue won't move the way it normally should, and his voice gives out completely. The world tilts to one side, even though he's trying to remain upright. Without another sound, his muscles go slack and he slumps over. He has no control over his body, but he can still feel everything that's happening.

_\- oh, shit, oh, no, no no no, please, not this, no -_

Then they drag him out of the cell, and Pidge rages and screams death threats to the aliens and shouts his name until Keith can't hear her any longer.

* * *

Keith ends up kneeling on a platform in some kind of market square, but he isn't sure how he got there.  

_Did he walk? Or did the guards have to drag him behind them?_

There's a whole crowd of people clustered down below the platform, and Keith knows that if it weren't for the four guards standing around him, he'd already be dead. The force of this place's hatred is almost a physical weight. 

He swallows, casts his eyes around, trying to look around for someone who might, just _might_ , want to stop this from happening, but there's no one in sight.

_He's completely alone._

 

One of the aliens steps forward and says - something - but Keith can't quite understand the words. He's too afraid. The drugs slow his brain down, cutting off any hope he has of knowing how he's going to die.

Because he _is_ going to die. 

That much is certain.

He doesn't know what the Galra did to these people, but it's clear they intend to kill him for it. 

The only question remaining is _how_.

* * *

The answer comes soon enough.

The crowd gathered around him takes it in turns to come up to him and cut him. It's never deep enough to kill him, but oh, god, it hurts. Every single injury burns as if the blade were coated in poison.

Soon enough, Keith loses track of how many people have already passed through the line, and how many there are yet to come.

* * *

They don't even talk to him. 

They talk _at_ him. Not _to_ him, no, never that.

_Galra scum like him?_

No.

_He's not worth the effort._

* * *

 More than anything else, Keith wishes he could fall unconscious, or at least disassociate, but the drugs in his system prevent him from any such small mercy.

_It hurts. It hurts so much._

The cycle goes on for what seems eternity. 

* * *

 Once - and only once - Keith tries to talk to them. It's harder than it should be, but he's crying. 

_It's always harder to talk to someone when when you're crying._

"You don't - have to do this- " 

The guard next to him raises a knife of her own.

"Please - _don't_ \- **_please_** -"

_Agony._

The guard's knife drips red when she pulls it free from Keith's side. He doubles over, trying and failing not to scream as the pain hits him. Even so, he tries again.

"-I'm - 'm -"

The guard doesn't even flinch. She just flips the knife in her hand and rams it hilt-deep into his shoulder. Within seconds, her own fingers and forearm are stained scarlet.

" _That_ ," she hisses into his ear, "-was for my _sister_."

She drags the blade to one side. Keith cries out, and she smiles coldly at him before yanking it free with a vicious twist.

* * *

_They're taking vengeance for loved ones lost in the fight against the Galra._

"I'm on your side," he wants to tell them. " _I'm on your side."_

_Is he, though?_

_Maybe they're right._

_Maybe..._

_Maybe he does deserve to die._

* * *

Pidge bursts out of the prison doors just in time to see Guard - no - Guard _Bitch_ #1 remove what can only be described as a short sword from Keith's shoulder. Immediately, red soaks her friend's black flight suit, or - 

Or what little remains of it above the waist.

It's nothing more than a few shreds of black material. 

Everything else is red, red, red.

Cuts.

Stab wounds.

_He's dying._

The alarms blaring behind her in the prison hallways, the sight of the Green Lion diving towards their position, the scent of iron and rust - it all vanishes in a frozen instant.

All Pidge sees is that these people have intentionally, _maliciously_ , hurt - maybe _killed_ \- her friend. Her brother.

That makes the only remaining course of action a very simple one.

**_Annihilate the threat._ **

* * *

Pidge doesn't really know what happens after that. She has a few disjointed moments of clarity, all jumbled together and jammed into one incoherent mess. 

The sharp, metallic scent of electricity. Brief, high screams of agony and fear. Acrid smoke, burning her eyes. Green's mental roar of fury drowning out the shrieks of those fortunate enough not to be standing within a ten-foot radius of Katie Holt when she called down the fury of her Lion.

But she doesn't give a damn about any of that.

_Her friend needs her help._

Before Pidge really comprehends how she's done it, she's in the hold of the Green Lion, holding Keith in her arms as Green rushes back towards the Castle.

* * *

She has to try and help him stay aware of his surroundings. 

No, that's not it.

She doesn't want him to close his eyes. 

If he does, he may never open them again.

* * *

"Keith. Look at me. Keith. Please. Come on. _Keith_."

The voice is familiar.

But he doesn't want to look at whoever is talking. 

_It's too bright._

_Everything hurts._

The Red Paladin lets out a choking sob. 

* * *

Pidge holds him closer. 

"It's okay. It's okay. It's okay," she chants, and maybe if she says it often enough, she'll believe it.

Keith's chest is rising and falling far too quickly.

He's not doing good.

But she'll fix it.

She'll fix it.

And later, once he's stable, and in a healing pod, and safe, she'll go back and finish every single one of those bastards off. 


End file.
